Coparent Academy Podcast
Lifechanging Coparenting
Coparent Academy Podcast
#123 - Why Parenting Suffers After Separation
In this episode, we discuss why parenting suffers in the first year after separation and any other time similar stress and upheaval occur.
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Welcome everybody. This week we're going to start putting together the pieces from the past six episodes in this series on effective discipline. We started by discussing children's developmental status and needs, then we talked about the different parenting types and followed that up with an in-depth review of four pretty well-regarded parenting books. This week we're going to be kind of real about the state of parenting in the wake of separation and divorce. Going to be kind of real about the state of parenting in the wake of separation and divorce. If you're just going through an initial separation, you may be resistant to having this description of decreased parenting applied to you, and I totally understand that. You may be one of the few parents going through a separation whose parenting doesn't decline. If so, that's awesome for you and even more so for your kids. Odds are, however, that even if your parenting is generally pretty rock solid, you've noticed a difference in yourself lately. This episode can be equally helpful to you, even if you separated a long time ago, and that's because it's not the separation itself that causes the decrease in parenting, but instead it's all of the challenges and emotions that frequently come along with the separation. Unfortunately, many of those challenges and emotions can reoccur. It can also be produced by other circumstances in our lives, things other than a parental separation or divorce. So please don't get hung up on the idea that the discussion today is relevant only to those people just now going through a brand new separation.
Speaker 1:Universally, separation or divorce marks a pretty significant transition for families. This transition is frequently accompanied by things like emotional turbulence, financial adjustments, changes in living arrangements, and research shows pretty consistently that the first year following separation or divorce is particularly challenging for parents. But equally challenging is any other life change or transition that similarly produces emotional, financial and logistical upheavals. During this transitioning period, many parents experience a to the psychological, social and economic factors that contribute to the decline. We've broken this down into a few different categories, and so we're just going to go through each of them in turn. The first is emotional distress and how that impacts parenting. Difficult transitions are often highly emotional experiences, and they're often associated with feelings of grief or anger, sadness, anxiety. This emotional distress can reduce your ability to maintain a consistent and nurturing parenting style.
Speaker 1:Significant emotional stress can lead to what they call emotional spillover, where parents inadvertently transfer their stress onto their kids. When parents are preoccupied with their own emotional struggles, they tend to become less patient, less sympathetic and less responsive to their kids' needs, and all of that translates to a decline in parenting quality. There's also increased stress from adjusting to new roles and new responsibilities, so after separation, parents often face the burden of new responsibilities they never had to take on before. Single parents may need to juggle work, household duties and parenting without the support of their partner. This increased workload can lead to things like higher stress levels. It can leave parents with less time and energy to devote to their kids, and single parents often experience higher stress levels and record feeling overwhelmed by the demands of parenting alone. Similar adjustments need to be made when new stepfamilies are formed, when a parent relocates, or maybe when a parent gets a new, more demanding job or goes back to school. These transitions can also cause parents to experience higher stress levels and to feel overwhelmed.
Speaker 1:When you're feeling overwhelmed from an increase in stress, that can result in less consistent parenting, rules and expectations can start to fluctuate and discipline becomes more erratic. Economic hardship is also an issue. After separation, households often transition from two incomes to one income. Financial stress of any kind can lead to increased anxiety and worry. Economic hardship can lead to what they refer to as economic pressure, which in turn can increase parental stress and reduce the quality of parent-child interactions. Financial difficulties can limit a parent's ability to provide resources and opportunities for their kids, such as extracurricular activities, a quality daycare, even basic needs. All of this further strains the parent-child relationship.
Speaker 1:Something else that can be a real difficulty is ongoing conflict with their ex. So having ongoing conflict between parents after they separated can significantly impair their parenting abilities for both of them. High conflict situations create an environment of tension and stress, and that can all be detrimental to effective co-parenting. When parents are preoccupied with conflicts and legal battles, their ability to focus on their kids' emotional needs is reduced. Their ability to focus on their kids emotional needs is reduced. Interparental conflict after divorce is a significant predictor of parenting stress and negatively affects parenting quality. High levels of conflict can lead to parents being less cooperative and that can also result in inconsistent rules, discipline and emotional support for their kids. When children are witnessing conflict between their parents, that can cause them to have emotional and psychological difficulties, which can lead to them acting out, which further makes it difficult to have effective discipline, because now you have more of a parenting challenge than you did before. This interparental conflict can flare up multiple times over the years and doesn't just magically go away 12 months after separation occurs. Whenever you have one of these conflict flare-ups, both you and your kids will probably experience seasons of reduced parental warmth and parenting quality.
Speaker 1:Another issue that happens with separation is the disruption of social networks, relationships with friends and family. They can change. You can lose mutual friends or you can feel stigmatized. That can reduce the support system that you rely on as a parent for emotional and practical assistance. Social support is critical for effective parenting. It provides parents with resources, advice and some emotional relief. Even A lack of support can lead to feelings of isolation, and that makes it harder for parents to manage the demands of parenting, especially when parenting becomes more difficult. Parents with limited social support tend to experience higher levels of stress and they often engage in less effective parenting behaviors.
Speaker 1:Mental health issues like depression and anxiety are also really common among parents going through separation or divorce. These mental health challenges can really significantly impair a parent's ability to be consistent and provide supportive care to their kids. When a parent is depressed, they may struggle with low energy, irritability, a lack of motivation, and all of that affects their activities and their relationships, including their parenting and their relationships with their kids. Forensical depression is associated with negative parenting behaviors, including less warmth, more hostility and inconsistency in discipline, and all of that signals a decline in the quality of the parent-child relationship. Again, I hope you're hearing a theme Now, sometimes when there's a transition to single parenting, that parenting is new and unfamiliar.
Speaker 1:You know a parent may lack the skills and strategies that they need to manage the increased demands of parenting alone. So people who are going through single parenthood for the first time really often feel unprepared and they struggle to figure out how to establish routines and discipline strategies that work effectively with their new family structure. This lack of experience can result in them having less self-confidence. It can result in less effective parenting, especially during the first year after separation or divorce. Kids often react to the parent separation with behavioral changes, such as increased aggression, anxiety or withdrawal, and these reactions can be super challenging for parents to manage, especially when they're also coping with their own emotional and practical struggles. Parents who are already stressed or overwhelmed may have difficulty responding effectively to their children's behavioral changes, and that further deteriorates the quality of their parenting. When children act out or become withdrawn, parents sometimes feel unsure about how to address these issues and that leads to inconsistent discipline or insufficient emotional control. And that would be true in an intact household.
Speaker 1:When you separate out the parenting into two distinct households in which the parents aren't necessarily getting along, it makes it even more complicated. So if there's already unhealthily high co-parenting conflict or a lack of trust in the co-parenting relationship, then there's going to be a very real fear that the kid's behavioral changes can be weaponized by one or both parents. I mean, imagine parent A saying oh, my child is acting out whenever they come home and it takes me two days to get them back to normal after they've been at your house. There can be many contributing causes to a child's behavioral issues and it's really tempting for co-parents at war with each other to blame each other for 100% of the kid's behavioral problems. But it's often the case that much of the issue may have nothing to do with the quality of either parents parenting or their relationship with the kids. Oftentimes it's just their child going through a developmental stage and dealing with those changes. And to layer on top of that co-parenting conflict and having separated households, it's a pretty potent mix, even if both parents are parenting extremely well.
Speaker 1:Now, after separation, you're going to have a shift to new living arrangements and that can be a significant adjustment for both parents and for kids. Changes could include moving to a new house, adjusting to a different visitation schedule, adapting to shared custody arrangements. These transitions are hard for kids. They're hard for parents too. Transitions can disrupt routines and create uncertainty, and that makes it difficult for parents to provide a stable and consistent environment for their kids. Successful co-parenting requires effective communication and cooperation. It requires a mutual focus on the kid's well-being, and that can be kind of hard to achieve right after separation or after other big transitions such as relocations or remarriages.
Speaker 1:Another issue that can arise that isn't as obvious is an impact on the parent's self-perception. You know, having a divorce or separation can significantly impact a parent's self-esteem and their sense of identity, especially if their identity was really closely tied to their marital status. Individuals going through a divorce often experience a crisis of self-identity that can lead to self-doubt and a decline in their perceived confidence as parents, their own perception of their confidence as parents. This lack of confidence can result in less authoritative parenting and that results in parents becoming maybe overly permissive or, on the other end, overly strict, as they kind of struggle to find their footing as parents in this new environment. But similarly, it doesn't have to be a separation or divorce. Any life event that challenges a parent's sense of self can have kind of similar results. I mean, for example, a parent who loses their job may go through a period of self-doubt or they may experience a sense of shame, even related to that loss of their job. A parent who learns that they have a serious illness may also experience self-doubt or shame. They may have concerns about their ability to provide for themselves and their children. They may feel ostracized, as maybe even their close friends or family are a little less likely to want to see them or hang out with them because of their own fears about their health. So whenever a parent is put in a circumstance that challenges their sense of self, their perception of self parenting is pretty sure to be affected also.
Speaker 1:Legal stress is a real thing as well, as any parent who's gone through a divorce knows, and the legal aspects of divorce or separation, including custody battles, in addition to things like property and debt division or alimony arguments, that can be a source of significant stress for parents. The adversarial nature of legal battles can heighten the tensions and focus parents' attention on maybe winning or protecting their interests, and that comes sometimes at the expense of their kids' needs. Parents who find themselves engaged in ongoing legal conflicts will very often experience high levels of stress and frustration, and not to mention loss of stress on their finances and on their time as well, and that can lead to maybe some impaired decision making and a decline in positive parenting practices. So to some degree, parents may begin to prioritize the legal outcome over maintaining a supportive and nurturing environment for their kids. It's not that they do that intentionally, it's just that they run out of capacity to do all the things. And when the legal battle is all-consuming and it's got tight deadlines, parenting, which is much more amorphous and less rigidly structured, can fall by the wayside.
Speaker 1:And here's one last category as well, and I'm sure there are others that I haven't covered. But one last category that is also maybe not as self-evident but is important is the lack of time and money for self-care. I mean, today is a world filled with stress and all sorts of direct and secondary traumas, especially when you're going through a difficult divorce or separation. So when you're dealing with a world filled of stress, few people put enough emphasis on self-care. You know things like exercise, mindfulness, getting sufficient rest.
Speaker 1:When times get really hard emotionally or legally or financially, parents are more likely to neglect their own needs like this. It's completely understandable. I mean, how can you make time for something that sounds as unnecessary as quote self-care when you're doing everything you can to deal with the immediate demands of parenting maybe a legal battle and just kind of daily survival. But a lack of self-care can lead to burnout, leads to fatigue and some reduced emotional resilience. All of that is critical for effective parenting. You need to not be fatigued. You can't get burned out. You have to maintain your emotional resilience to parent effectively. So self-care and personal well-being are really necessary for parents to maintain the emotional and physical stamina that's required for them to parent in an effective, drama-free, positive way.
Speaker 1:When parents don't take the time to recover and let themselves heal, their ability to provide consistent, positive care and support for their kids can be compromised. So the first year after separation or divorce, it's a really difficult period for parents. They're figuring out all sorts of different emotional, social and economic challenges. But more broadly, any circumstance or life change that causes the same kinds of challenges will produce similar parenting challenges as this post-separation period. The decline in parenting skills that tend to occur during these difficult times are very often a result of heightened stress, emotional turmoil, financial strain and changes in the various family dynamics.
Speaker 1:So, if you feel like you're not parenting as well as you'd like, consider taking some practical steps. Seek support, manage stress, prioritize your own well-being and your kids' needs. With time, some effort and the right resources, like what's available here in our podcast, with the books that we've been discussing, with the courses at Co-Parent Academy, you can improve your parenting skills and you can provide a stable nurturing environment for your kids, even when times get tough. All right, thank you everybody. That's it for this week. Next week we'll continue integrating all that we've learned so far into learning how to have effective discipline.